AJ has just released PictureWindow 1.5, to which I contributed some ideas, code and graphics.
It’s a simple image viewing app, allowing you to browse through folders, see the images in them and delete them if you want.
It’s interesting - working with someone else on a program forces you to write much more cleanly. It was cool, seeing as we’re both learning at the same time, to be able to combine our pretty incomplete knowledge to solve problems.
We’d love to know if anyone uses this, or has any suggestions on features they’d like to see. By doing the whole “release early and often” thing, and by making the source available, we might be able to turn this into something that lots of people might find useful. And if not, at least it’s been a great way to learn more about Cocoa and Objective-C.
Download (198KB)
Edit: Whenever I’m reading about an application, I usually give the page about eight seconds to tell me where to see a screenshot, then I’ll just ignore it. I think most people do a similar thing, and this is why Adium and Transmit are regarded as vital Mac OS X utilities and Quicksilver still resembles a scary cult, rather than getting the status it deserves. Make it obvious how to see some screenshots, get rid of some of the broken links and it’d be so much more popular.
Anyway, here’s what PictureWindow looks like:
Screenshot (364KB)
A few years ago, British television companies realised how popular “Top 100â€? lists can be. The same happened for Digg a few months ago. While I doubt my site could handle being dugg (I’m working on that though) I thought it’d be a nice way to share some cool things. I’ll do a few more of these over the next couple of weeks.
Top Five Useful Obscure Features in Mac OS X
1. Bluetooth in Address BookThat little Bluetooth icon gets neglected a lot, but some of Address Book’s best features are enabled once it’s paired with a mobile phone. One of the most useful? Click on any contact’s mobile phone number to send them a text message via your phone, but using your keyboard. It’s a much nicer way to send messages when you’re at your desk.
2. Mini DictionaryI found this out on the web a while ago, and it’s really useful. Hover over any word in a Cocoa application (Mail, Safari, Address Book…) and press Command (⌘)-Control-D. This brings up a little “mini-dictionary” window, like the one shown here. Here’s the even cooler bit: keep holding down Command and Control and move your mouse. It goes crazy, defining every word you touch. Nice.
3. Video Clips Window in DVD PlayerDVD Player in Tiger had a lot of new features; bookmarks, support for HD discs, the navigator window… but most people still use only what was available to them in Panther. The Video Clips window is nice for storing those segments on Family Guy that you want to show your friends. I hope this feature is developed further for Leopard; it’d be nice to be able to choose the order in which video clips are played; then you could make your own trailers, or edit out bits to make films safe for children or parents to watch.
4. Mail LinkFor those of you into “social browsing” that aren’t interested in all the various websites that do it for you, the Mail Link feature is pretty cool. One-click takes you into Mail, and then just drag a group from Address Book onto the “To” field. You can find it as a link in the RSS browser, or in the File menu.
5. Character PaletteThis one has to be my favourite. From the keyboard menu (the one on the right with the flag), choose “Show Character Palette”. Make sure that “All Characters” is selected in the little “View” popup menu at the top, and scroll through… there are so many uses for these characters. They’ll happily be inserted into almost any application, and you won’t have any problem printing them thanks to Mac OS X’s unicode support. How about playing with them in Photoshop? Apply a layer style or two to them and you have a shiny icon or button.
It’s the kind of thing that really makes you want to learn what they all mean, just so that you have a chance to use them.
I hope this was of some interest. I’ll try to get some more up when I have the time (this post took ages!).
I’ve been playing with Processing, and of course the first project I tried to make was The Circle Monster. You can see the result, or the ugly, uncommented source code (same page).
Processing was fun to work with, and I’d like to use it more. It takes very little time to get something on the screen; very little setup required. If you have a little programming experience, you should have a play with it, and if you don’t then this might be a great way to get into it. I can see its appeal for educators; it has everything you want from a learning experience – low tolerance for errors, but a big reward for a little effort. Have a look at some of the things people have done with it in the exhibition. We Feel Fine and The Dumpster are a couple of my favourites – great ways to visualise what seems like pretty fuzzy data.
In other news, I’m fairly busy at the moment with making this city, and working on some other stuff.
Darren Aronofsky is the director responsible for Ï€ and Requiem for a Dream. I loved both of those, so I’m really excited to hear about his next film, The Fountain, which is scheduled to be released on the 22nd of November in the USA, and on the 16th of February next year for the UK. It looks like it’s going to be a moody sci-fi space story.
Have a look at this Wired article. It’s a good read; it talks about his filmmaking process, as well as some of the cool techniques he uses to show space. Here’s the coolest part: he uses no CGI at all. Isn’t that an interesting idea? In order to capture the chaotic influences that are almost always lost in CGI, they film particles in a fluid at a tiny scale - for example, a pinch of curry powder to show thousands of meteors flying towards the camera. How cool is that? I can’t wait to see how this looks.
The other elements are looking good, too. Clint Mansell is going to be doing the score, along with The Kronos Quartet, so it should at least have a soundtrack on par with Requiem for a Dream. The cast is good; and didn’t suffer from losing Brad Pitt.
I can’t wait!
Edit: Have a look at the trailer. Wow… it’s a lot more Middle-Earthy than I had pictured, but it looks fantastic. I want to see more of the effects.
